


Ghosts

by cognomen



Series: small god of words [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Implied Violence, M/M, gross amounts of poetry, historical angst, there is no excuse for this really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:37:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4687499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The pursuit is sweet and slow, Pazzi thinks, the fox is clever. He does not run from hunters, if he knows they are coming, he turns and presents his dangerous teeth. He has twice shown his snarl to Pazzi - but the detective is a fox also and not the old hunting hound he seems, one who has seen blood. He's heard somewhere - maybe a children's' cartoon he saw when he was very little - that dog foxes would revenge their mates when the hounds came. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>The end piece for Small God Of Words, as it only ever could have ended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

The pursuit is sweet and slow, Pazzi thinks, the fox is clever. He does not run from hunters, if he knows they are coming, he turns and presents his dangerous teeth. He has twice shown his snarl to Pazzi - but the detective is a fox also and not the old hunting hound he seems, one who has seen blood. He's heard somewhere - maybe a children's' cartoon he saw when he was very little - that dog foxes would revenge their mates when the hounds came.

Pazzi collects an old box from amongst his things. He polishes the lid, cleans every speck of dust. He needs a clean print, in situ. Hannibal -he no longer thought of him as Dr. Fell - would be unable to resist the temptation of the device inside. The metal of the bridle is too rusted to be a threat, he will have to rely on the well-lacquered wood. It will do the job.

Before Pazzi had seen the money - before he had touched it, before the image of how much it was had burned itself indelibly into his visual memory - Pazzi had pursued other avenues. Will Graham was not an ally, even if his methods were. Jack Crawford was a knight on a different quest. Pazzi was on his own with warnings ringing in his ears - Will Graham's matter of fact statements delivered as efficiently as a knife to the kidneys.

Now, the money is his only backup. Certainly, he cannot trust the Questura to do anything with the opportunity other than to throw him under the bus. He will, as Pazzi has in the years since his first tangle with il Mostro, make do. The money is in his wallet. Not much. Enough for a funeral, if he can arrange it carefully.

Anything to get the body out of that meat drawer at the morgue, to get the ghost out of Pazzi's head.

Business first. Money first.

Pazzi gathers the box carefully, holding it by the bottom. He loads it onto a pad for moving furniture in the back of his old Alfa-Romeo GTV and drives very carefully to the Palazzo Vecchio. 

The Atrocious Torture Instruments show. Hannibal Lecter watching the vivid faces of voyeurs as they press around the torture instruments. A watcher of those who watched, rubbing against each other at the implications of historic pain laid out as a buffet.

Pazzi carries the box through the thinning, late night crowd. He shows his badge when a guard challenges him. In half an hour, the hall will be empty, but for now it is overpowering, the scents of cologne and rut.

Upstairs, Dr. Lecter stands alone in the gallery, looking out. His eyes are calm and dark, red in their depths like a demon's. It is just the harsh light of the floodlights below. 

Pazzi's mind is dark and quiet. Focused. A fox hunting.

In these moments, he finds he is not alone. There is a soft light at the edges of the room, a welcoming space for specters. The ghost has evacuated his kitchen and watches with empty eye-sockets the unfolding scene. This is the Salon of Lilies, Pazzi realizes as he waits. With flashing knife and maddened eyes, his ancestor had once stabbed Giuliano di Medici here, and through his own thigh in a frenzy.

Pazzi stands where his ancestor had bled; danger then, danger now. The part of him that is not his friend says that he and Dr. Lecter have killed together, that Anthony was their victim for his failure all those years ago. Cold sweat trickles beneath his shirt as he reaches for the knife, as it disappears into his pocket. His face is cold. There is a faint smell like chemicals used in restoring paintings.

The words exchanged don't matter. They are a baring of teeth, a warning that death his coming. The knife in Pazzi's pocket is very small comfort. The chemical smell is Ether, he decides, when the rag is against his open mouth. Lecter warns but only seconds before he bites, it seems. In the instant before he sinks into the spinning black, the ghost speaks soft comfort.

_Those eyes 'neath which my passionate rapture rose..._

Sonnets and silence. Blackness with a rushing sensation like the riptide at the center of a river, pulling Pazzi miles down and away.

"Take some deep breaths, clear your head..." Lecter's voice.

His own, trapped.

Anthony's; _the arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile,  
could my own soul from its own self beguile,_

"I haven't had a bite all day. Actually-"

Fear here, real and rising from the dull and acid roiling in Pazzi's belly. He's come for this, he thinks. He has come _to_ this, round and round to the end of the line.

_And in a separate world of dreams enclose,The hair's bright tresses, full of golden glow_

"I didn't see the forecast, did you?"

Pazzi's own thoughts are quiet under this tirade. His head is pounding. He wants both to be silent, though he is resigned to what silence means. A breath on his cheek, hot. Not Lecter's.

"If you tell me what I need to know, Commentadore, it would be convenient for me to leave without my meal."

_And the soft lightning of the angelic smile,_

Pazzi can answer Dr. Lecter's questions only with looks and nods.

_That changed this earth to some celestial isle, are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows._

Mason Verger's money is still in his wallet when he sells Hannibal his answer in blinks and code.

 _And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn,  
Left dark without the light I loved in vain - it'll be over soon, _ amante _, you won't be a ghost if he doesn't eat you_

The knife flashes. The sensation of hands covering his eyes so Pazzi closes them. Anthony's loud intonation in his ears, breathy poetry covering up his own whimpers. He is fairly certain the pain is the same as Francesco must have felt, but the peace different.

_Adrift in a tempest on a bark forlorn_  
Dead is the source of all my amorous strain  
Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn  
And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain 

This is what becomes of greyscale things, folded down into black and zipped in.

Still in darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> -LOTS of quotes pulled directly from the Hannibal text and reworked here  
> -I couldn't re-watch the episode, sorry, couldn't MAKE myself do it. I did re-reference Hannibal text however  
> -The poem referenced is 'Gli Occhi Di' Ch' Io' Parlai', by Petrarch (you might remember from the 5th part of Dance of Hours), as translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.


End file.
